Ryohei Usui shows at MUJIN-TO Production
The show titled Still life on the street reconstructs moments and objects from city-life into the gallery space
Dates and Venue:
29 October – 20 November 2022
MUJIN-TO Production, Tokyo, Japan
MUJIN-TO Production presented Ryohei Usui’s solo exhibition Still life on the street. As the exhibition title suggests, Usui cuts out still life-like compositions found in cityscapes, which have long been a source of interest and inspiration for his works and reconstructs them in the gallery space. In 2009, Usui presented the photographic series Forgotten Liquid as a kind of contemporary portrait by capturing the presence of people through plastic bottles and other containers left on the streets. Since 2011, after the Great East Japan Earthquake, Usui has continued to make the series PET (Portrait of Encountered Things) in which he reproduced these plastic containers in glass. Usui’s motif of plastic containers such as PET bottles, which are mass-produced and consumed every day, give viewers different impressions depending on the time and environment.
Installation view: Ryohei Usui, Still life on the street, 2022
Image sourced from MUJIN-TO Production
Installation view: Ryohei Usui, Still life on the street, 2022
Image sourced from MUJIN-TO Production
In his last solo exhibition Solid, State, Survivor at MUJIN=TO Production, various types of plastic containers washed ashore by the river appeared in the gallery. The installation, representing the flow from the river to the sea, evokes environmental issues such as plastic pollution in rivers and oceans, while portable sanitizers and hand soap containers are all too familiar and symbolic to those of us who have been busy taking measures to prevent viral infections caused by Covid-19. They seem to be our new self-portraits, which are always changing with the times.
The subjects of this exhibition, scenes that Usui sees on the streets that somehow catch his fancy, are sometimes beautifully presented, and at other times with an air of subtle humour.
About the artist
Utilizing ordinary objects as his main motif/medium, Usui has released works that alter our “perspectives” to things already existing in our life, as if making Mitate (an old Japanese term for “metaphor” in haiku culture) updated to the contemporary time.
Installation view: Ryohei Usui, Still life on the street, 2022
Image sourced from MUJIN-TO Production
The subjects of this exhibition, scenes that Usui sees on the streets that somehow catch his fancy, are sometimes beautifully presented, and at other times with an air of subtle humour.
Installation views: Ryohei Usui, Still life on the street, 2022
Image sourced from MUJIN-TO Production
